Well I just installed the unbelievably cheap ZX8-CCB composite video mod, and it’s awesome. It did need a little tweaking on the presets to get over a completely black screen, but the video quality is second to none on this unbelievably cheap (£5.80+£1.90P&P) bit of kit. Other mods are available but at 5x the price. If you want one, check out http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/3712

If you’re interested in reading a little of the background on PiMagic, take a look at these introductory slides from my recent flash talk at Wuthering Bytes. I’ll likely be manufacturing a small number of prototype kits. If anyone is interested, let me know. Once I have an idea of the volume I’ll be able to get an idea of price.

I’ve spent the last few days reworking the PCB layout of PiMagic with a few additional objectives:
– Add a Raspberry Pi mounting hole
– Remove unused areas of the Arduino shield (make PCB footprint as small as poss)
– Increase part density to leave a small prototyping area

I recently purchased a Nanode RF from the OSHUG 2012 hardware camp. This is a nifty little piece of kit combining arduino, ethernet, RF comms and other functionality into one arduino-sized board.

Before getting started with this I wanted to, see what resources were already used for the on-board devices, so I could see what sensors etc. I could connect and to where. Despite Ken’s efforts, the schematic isn’t the clearest to follow, so I decided to decode this into a table showing what resources are used where. This is attached below (let me know if you want the spreadsheet or PDF versions).